So, it has been a year since I wrote the original bio for CB. How is he doing now? What progress has he seen? Well, I thought it would be good for me to explore these ideas. CB has worked so hard this year and has progressed beautifully. He is still our happy, silly little boy. He remains just as curious as before and can find humor in just about any situation. Making funny sounds, screaming, and saying words that he finds humorous entertains him to no end. Asking questions every few minutes (if not more often) is still one of his traits. If he is not playing with his cars, you can often find him playing outside either digging in the dirt or exploring our backyard. He loves water, whether it be swimming in it or splashing it in swim class, playing with it while washing hands, pouring it out of his drink, pouring it from one container to another, or just pouring it out of anything.
His speech has improved tremendously. He can express himself in complete, short sentences, although he will still resort to phrases a good bit of the time. His speech therapists are primarily working on articulation, vocabulary expansion, and usage, sentence length expansion, and focus. CB continues to spit or hit when he doesn’t want to do something. Fortunately, he uses his words more often though. A huge step has been to expand his automatic response of “No” to just about any question to include “Ok”, “Yes”, silence, and sometimes a longer reply. He was in the habit of responding No to anything asked of him. It was his default response. If you waited a few seconds, he would many times comply or say another response. I think changing this has helped him also change his viewpoint a little. CB has gone through a stuttering phase. This came about when he started speaking in longer phrases. His speech therapists mention that they think this is due his desire to say something before having it planned out how to say it. He still does it some and I just ask him to take a deep breathe or to slow down. This usually works and he can start getting his thoughts out.
Fine and gross motor tasks still remain a big challenge for CB. He is currently working on writing his letters in pre-k and has started the “Handwriting without Tears” curriculum at OT. It only takes up about 5-8 minutes of OT. Sitting still, holding the pencil correctly, understanding where to start writing, understanding where to hold his body and head in relation to the work he is doing, planning the next stroke, and understanding where he should put his visual focus adds up to a very challenging set of tasks for CB. The hope is that by practicing now will help him achieve more success once he is in kindergarten. CB’s strength has noticeably improved. This has enabled him to endure and enjoy activities in OT like swinging in prone position/superman pose while playing games for 8+ minutes. I haven’t seen this translate into longer endurance during activities like running around and chase or increase his running speed. CB is still the slowest runner of his peers and just not often play games involving chase outside. He can climb higher, jump 1-2 ft down to another surface, peddle a trike, and jump over a low object. He is starting to catch a ball a little better. His visual tracking is definitely improving. You will notice above that I mention him swinging. For the swings at the park, he will now tolerate sitting in the swing with a little movement for about 30 seconds – 2 minutes. He is still not comfortable with that specific movement.
Socially, he has always engaged others to play. I feel he has more tools in his toolbox now and can play a larger variety of games and engage longer with his peers. He enjoys a certain level of imaginative play. Two of his classmates have asked for play dates 🙂 and both of the play dates were successes!! CB has 2 other friends we have play dates with often. We even have 2 other play dates to schedule for a swim classmate and a friend he made at a social group meetup. Improving his speech will help tremendously in this arena. Plus, he learns so much from playing with his little brother, too.
Surprise, surprise…CB’s favorite interest is cars, trucks, and things with wheels. This is one determined and dedicated kiddo. He has remained loyal to his one true love. You can get him to do just about anything with the promise of playing with or sometimes getting cars.
CB is fully potty-trained during the day. It was last March or April when potty-training really took off. Accidents every week or so remained common until the later part of 2015. We have even gone on day long car rides without accidents. He still wears a diaper at night. He had his first accident-free night last night. Time will tell if that was a fluke or will become a more regular occurrence.
CB is not the perfect sleeper he used to be but he is still a really good sleeper. He comes into our room most nights to sleep with us and it may be anytime between midnight-early morning. We go through phases of convincing him to not come into our room till he sees daylight outside. As you can interpret, this only works for a little while. CB doesn’t usually take long to fall asleep. If he takes awhile, it is often due to his little brother, HB, who sleeps in the room with him.
CB is the poster child of a good eater. Except for soups and spicy foods, he eats most anything. This works out well as it gets HB to eat more, who is not a great eater. Also, since CB is still GFCFSF, he makes it easy on us to feed him. We have been giving CB some dairy periodically. So far, we haven’t noticed side effects so we will most likely add some to his diet on a regular basis. Looking through the blogs, I see that I stated this same thing back in May. Clearly, we have been reluctant to add it back in on any regular basis yet. At this point, we also limit sugars, dyes, preservatives, and MSG.
CB’s motor-planning issues remain and he still presents with the symptoms of global dyspraxia (includes speech dyspraxia (apraxia) and limb dyspraxia).